


A Psionic Rating of 6.12

by captorvatiing



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Helmsman, References to Drugs, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 20:25:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3263234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captorvatiing/pseuds/captorvatiing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The true face of the Helmsman initiative was one of the worst kept secrets on Alternia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Psionic Rating of 6.12

**Author's Note:**

> How Sollux ended up staying with Karkat at the start of the Suffkat AU and some self indulgent Helmsman head-canoning.  
> This fits in somewhere around the middle of chapter two of [Hope is Not Lost](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2528348/chapters/5619569).

The true face of the Helmsman initiative was one of the worst kept secrets on Alternia. After the Summoner rebellion was quashed and the militia moved off-world the information was swept under the rug. Spreading that traitorous propaganda, all of it obviously slanderous misinformation about the glorious Empire, was an offence punishable by death, but they couldn't stop trolls from telling stories. Campfire legends, passed down from one psionic to the next, about trolls so riddled with holes that that you can see their bones, brains hanging out of skulls and eyes staring unseeing through friends and quadrant mates alike. Horror stories. The kind of thing that keeps a good lowblood in line for fear of things that go beep in the night. Grains of truth wrapped up in grizzly sci-fi until they were more fiction than fact, but useful. Despite the Empire’s best efforts the Helmsman horror story trope prevailed, and with it the warning to young psions - Don’t believe what they say on the news feed.

Sollux stared at the three pronged logo on his screen with his head in his hands.

Any troll with a mental proficiency rating higher than 4.13 had that nagging fear of summons. Some of them got away with it, delegated to less intensive positions or shoved through the system to be lost in slave-wage manual labor. For Sollux, though, it had been less of a nagging fear and more of a looming inevitability. He’d started deliberately fumbling his psionic assessments when he was four but by then it was far too late. He was already on their systems as a 6.12 and that wasn’t even remotely close to what he could do. A couple of online acquaintances had tried to quell his rising panic with reassurances that the stories weren’t even true. It was just like riding a terrorcoaster, sure you might fall off the rails and die in a horrible fun cart collision but the fear was probably unwarranted. The stories off trolls losing their horns for not keeping them inside the ride were just urban legends. Fairy tales, they said. 

It was sweet of them to try, as much as their reassurances were for themselves as well as him, but Sollux knew better. 

It was when he’d been around four, when he was a little less careful and felt a little more invincible that he’d been messing around on the restricted net and come across a series of helmsman maintenance schoolfeeds. What he’d seen amounted to nothing less than educational snuff porn. In one clip a towering adult teal blood, decked out in the stained leather apron of an engineer stood front and center, cooly describing how to open a Helmsman’s stomach without terminating it in the event of a life support malfunction. But it’s eyes were open. Over her shoulder, hanging limply in a tangle of chrome and pink, the helmsman was watching. Two points of dull blue light that blinked lazily at the camera as if it- as if he was more upset about them filming than about the procedure. He stayed that way, staring at the camera with his brows knitted together as the engineer drew neat black lines on his skin, his emaciated muscles twitching under the pen. It wasn’t until the scalpel sunk into his abdomen that his eyes squeezed shut and his head snapped back, hissing from the pain, even through the heavy fog of drugs they’d given him. Bile rose in the back of Sollux’s throat as the camera zoomed in on the dark yellow cut, dragging down to a thick rubber tube and- Sollux turned off the feed and spent the next two hours curled up on the floor of his ablutions trap clutching at his own horns like he might float away. 

He’d spent the next few days telling everyone who would sit still long enough what he saw, and digging up every schoolfeed, installation manual and blueprint he could get his claws on. Then he’d been called for a one week involuntary compatibility training course and after a week of psionic dampeners and achieve-or-die dexterity exercises he’d crawled, shaking, back into his computer chair and gotten really, really good at covering his tracks really, really fast. 

He exhaled slowly and pushed himself away from the desk. The logo shined back unforgiving. Given that it was an inevitability he’d planned for this in advance, but he had hoped he’d have a little more time before he had to abandon ship. 

“Right.” He muttered to himself. “Right. Shit shit shit fucking bulge fisting FUCK. We’re doing this. We’re making this happen.”

=You have been connected to the 2ECURE network=  
=twinArmageddons started trolling carcinoGeneticist!=  
TA: code piink.  
CG: FUCK. FUCK FUCK WHERE ARE YOU ARE YOU OKAY??  
CG: HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE BEFORE  
CG: YOU BETTER BE MAKING MOVES CAPTOR, I WILL PRESENT MY HIDEOUS MUTANT BULGE AS CALAMARI FOR THE IMPERIAL LUSUS BEFORE I LET YOU GET BATTERIED YOU SHIT PANNED BUCKET OF FESTERING DISCHARGE.  
TA: holy 2hiit chiill.  
TA: ii am two pre2ent my2elf for ””voluntary”” 2erviice or fiile an appeal wiithiin 350hr2 or be dragged iin for faiilure two comply.  
CG: YOU CAN FILE AN APPEAL???  
TA: lol no.  
TA: unle22 ii can fiind my2elf a niice 2alt 2wiilliing 2ugar daddy iin the next 24 hr2 ii’m 2pacebaiit.  
CG: WHAT ABOUT ERIDAN?? CAN’T YOU CLAIM HE’S YOUR BIG STRONG ROYAL BLOODED MATESPRIT AND HAVE HIM BUST THEIR ASSES OPEN OVER A SHINY COURTBLOCK DESK??  
TA: gro22 kk, ii’m not fiiliing for concupii2cent dii2pen2atiion wiith ampora.  
TA: iif hii2 bulge contaiined the fountaiin of youth ii’d 2till rather 2tuff my nook wiith biiowiire than 2o much a2 pretend two paiil that douche.  
TA: there’2 no way iin hell he’d agree two iit anyway.  
TA: iit’2 fiine we knew thii2 wa2 goiing two happen iit’2 ju2t a liittle earliier than we expected.  
TA: ii could 2ubmiit for iintiial a22e22ment and buy u2 more tiime.  
CG: NO. NO WAY. LETS FILE THAT IDEA IN THE “SO PAN ROTTINGLY STUPID THAT I THINK MY EYEBALLS HAVE BLISTERS FROM READING IT” PILE. ONCE THEY’VE GOT YOU YOU DON’T GET OUT. YOU DON’T GET FUCKING SEEN AGAIN, CAPTOR, YOU KNOW THIS!! YOU TOLD ME THIS!!! OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN GREAT DETAIL FOR GOING ON FOUR EXCRUCIATING SWEEPS.  
CG: YOU’RE NOT DISAPPEARING ON ME.  
TA: yeah ii fiigured you’d 2ay that.  
TA: warm up the coon then 2nookum2 ii’m 2tayiing at your2 ;)  
=twinArmageddons has stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist!=  
CG: DON’T CALL ME  
CG: OH MY GOD I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH.  
=2ECURE network has disconnected!=


End file.
